ALL THAT IS NEEDED TO DISPROVE THIS THEORY IS A SINGLE APPEARANCE FROM ASSANGE IN THE ECUADORIAN EMBASSY!

http://imgur.com/a/9Jmd5

http://archive.is/heCYT

IMAGES RELATED

CURRENTLY NO PROOF HE IS IN THE EMBASSY IN THE UK

SWEDISH PROSECUTOR AND HIS OWN LAWYER WEREN’T ALLOWED TO SEE HIM. COMMUNICATION THROUGH AMBASSADOR.

Posts off 4chan related to this

= =

Assange and the entire Wikileaks staff has been missing since Oct 15. 3 of his attorneys are dead along with the director of Wikileaks who died on Oct 22. The deadman switch seems to have gone off on Oct 21st (during the DDoS) and again a couple of times after (check dates of big DDoS attacks against the site and when it’s down). It seems like 1. Wikileaks is compromised 2. the keys to unlock some of the insurance files have been released and 3. they are trying very hard to stop people from finding them.

Anon has been working on this nonstop since Oct 15. All threads get slid or deleted and the people making progress go silent. As soon as they found relevant messages encoded in the blockchain, the mempool was flooded, incredibly high transaction fees started showing up and a high number of transactions with encoded disinformation were made. If you look at the deleted threads and the information posted on onion links, it looks like anon was able to unlock some of the files on Oct 27 and that more files are being secretly encoded into the blockchain and the new file directory on the Wikileaks site (the last change was last night). If you want to see anon’s work, google ’09-Nov-438498967 06:00′ or look for insurance/DMS threads on onion chans then look at the dates below.

If you are skeptical, download the latest insurance files posted: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/796085225394536448

Run ‘scripts file | head -c 18′ and you will see that the files were not salted. All previously published insurance files have been salted.

Oct 20/21: Wikileaks tweets 5 tweets with misspelled words. The incorrect letters spell “HELP HIM”. The Wikileaks twitter has never made a spelling error, let alone 5 in two days.

Oct 21: Massive DDoS attack on US internet. Wikileaks tweets to imply the attack originates from its supporters, asking them to stop, no evidence supports claim.

Oct 21: DDoS attack takes down Twitter.

At this point anon notices that the insurance keys were posted on several sites and deleted. People start trying to post the information but it is immediately deleted. Everyone takes refuge in onion threads that also disappear.

Oct 21: London Airport evacuated due to “chemical attack”, potentially used as cover to fly Assange out of country. (Conjecture but suspicious timing all the same)

Oct 22: Gavin MacFadyen (mentor to Assange and key player in Wikileaks) dies of lung cancer.

4TH PERSON RELATED TO WIKILEAKS NOW DEAD IN AS MANY MONTHS!!! MASSIVE RED FLAG!!!

Oct 23: Wikileaks Tweets poll asking how best to prove Assange is alive (he still hasn’t appeared on video or at the window since).

Oct 24: Wikileaks Tweets video of Assange and Michael Moore recorded in June.

Oct 24: Anon is able to find the deleted keys. They are posted and deleted again.

Oct 25: Someone comes into a thread and gives anon a hint about messages in the blockchain.

Oct 26: 4chan users successfully decode their first message in Wikileak’s blockchain. Threads are instantly flooded by shills saying that it’s not worth looking into. The blockchain is blocked with fees and 43000 unconfirmed transactions appear in the mempool.

Oct 27 (AM): Anon moves into an onion thread, posts code and a tutorial on decoding messages in the blockchain. Several files and messages are found.

Bitcoin 0.13.1 is released and a ‘soft fork’ begins:

https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.13.1

The blockchain is attacked: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/59qiyg/is_there_some_attack_going_whats_with_large/

Oct 27(PM): Several anon report losing their connection. Talk of v&s and black bagging begins. Someone posts that they discovered a flaw that allows anyone to retrieve the password from the files. Clues are dumped and the onion threads go silent. On Tox chat someone says someone unlocked some of the files, warns that FBI will announce that new evidence was found in someone’s computer and that a giant human trafficking operation would be exposed.

Nov 10: Staff publicly states their concern for Assange’s continue silence after the election. Incorrectly states that insurance files are future leaks and refers to the ones posted on Nov 8. These are the first files to have filenames that reference their content: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wikileaks_staff_despite_our_editor/

AssuredlyAThrowAway, SATXTAN, Here4Popcorn, crawlingfasta, GamingForHonor, kybarnet ALL added to 2 of these subreddits.

Oct 20/21: Wikileaks tweets 5 tweets with misspelled words. The incorrect letters spell “HELP HIM”. The Wikileaks twitter has never made a spelling error, let alone 5 in two days.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/789078312043761665

http://archive.is/0Htlx

#imWithHer – im

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/789170993252081666

http://archive.is/OGWL5

Navel Intelligence – Naval – EL

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/789173501458456576

http://archive.is/oTPi1

wopper – wHopper – H

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/789456189851627522

http://archive.is/mDpQe

presumtive – presumptive – P

(Can’t seem to find all these tweets however this is more suspicious activity that lines up with the forming narrative of Wikileaks being under attack)

Oct 21: Massive DDoS attack on US internet. Wikileaks tweets to imply the attack originates from its supporters, asking them to stop, no evidence supports claim.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/789574436219449345

http://archive.is/XqYuP

Oct 21: DDoS attack takes down Twitter.

At this point anon notices that the insurance keys were posted on several sites and deleted. People start trying to post the information but it is immediately deleted. Everyone takes refuge in onion threads that also disappear.

Oct 21: London Airport evacuated due to “chemical attack”, potentially used as cover to fly Assange out of country. (Conjecture but suspicious timing all the same)

http://time.com/4542496/london-city-airport-chemical-incident/

http://archive.is/Lv5KT

https://youtu.be/ViMVLplr8YM

Oct 22: Gavin MacFadyen (mentor to Assange and key player in Wikileaks) dies of lung cancer.

4TH PERSON RELATED TO WIKILEAKS NOW DEAD IN AS MANY MONTHS!!! MASSIVE RED FLAG!!!

https://www.rt.com/usa/363793-gavin-macfadyen-dies-wikileaks/

http://archive.is/JAZ24

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/790278989596295170

http://archive.is/bpq74

Oct 23: Wikileaks Tweets poll asking how best to prove Assange is alive (he still hasn’t appeared on video or at the window since).

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/790406530738913285

http://archive.is/7EDvG

Oct 24: Wikileaks Tweets video of Assange and Michael Moore recorded in June.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/790394830979465216

http://archive.is/w1Hpu

Wikileaks also have this posted, AGAIN not proving Assange is alive.

https://twitter.com/SHO_TheCircus/status/790672953331425280

http://archive.is/OiA5B

Oct 24: Anon is able to find the deleted keys. They are posted and deleted again.

[SOURCE/CITATION NEEDED]

Oct 25: Someone comes into a thread and gives anon a hint about messages in the blockchain.

[SOURCE/CITATION NEEDED]

Oct 26: 4chan users successfully decode their first message in Wikileak’s blockchain. Threads are instantly flooded by shills saying that it’s not worth looking into. The blockchain is blocked with fees and 43000 unconfirmed transactions appear in the mempool.

[SOURCE/CITATION NEEDED]

Oct 27 (AM): Anon moves into an onion thread, posts code and a tutorial on decoding messages in the blockchain. Several files and messages are found.

Bitcoin 0.13.1 is released and a ‘soft fork’ begins:

https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.13.1

The blockchain is attacked: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/59qiyg/is_there_some_attack_going_whats_with_large/

Oct 27(PM): Several anon report losing their connection. Talk of v&s and black bagging begins. Someone posts that they discovered a flaw that allows anyone to retrieve the password from the files. Clues are dumped and the onion threads go silent. On Tox chat someone says someone unlocked some of the files, warns that FBI will announce that new evidence was found in someone’s computer and that a giant human trafficking operation would be exposed.

Nov 10: Staff publicly states their concern for Assange’s continue silence after the election. Incorrectly states that insurance files are future leaks and refers to the ones posted on Nov 8. These are the first files to have filenames that reference their content: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wikileaks_staff_despite_our_editor/

If you truly care about Assange and the future of Wikileaks you should consider investigating the possibility of the DMS being activated. It might be the only leverage that can be used to bring him back safely.

= = = =

CURRENTLY NO PROOF HE IS IN THE EMBASSY IN THE UK

SWEDISH PROSECUTOR AND HIS OWN LAWYER WEREN’T ALLOWED TO SEE HIM. COMMUNICATION THROUGH AMBASSADOR.

Another November 5th, another mass mobilisation to the streets by the Anonymous collective.

Since one cold night in 2011, Anonymous UK has gathered together in Trafalgar Square, as a centerpiece of a worldwide Anonymous operation of global strength and solidarity, a warning to all governments worldwide that if they keep trying to censor, cut, imprison, or silence the free world or the free internet then we will not stand idly by.

Anonymous has no leaders, it has no central committee or public relations department, it is a hive-mind of normal people, just like you, who have decided that action is the only answer now.

In 2012 as Anonymous UK prepared to mobilise for November 5th a press release went out, every line filled with venom against the then Home Secretary Theresa May. In the four years that has passed Mrs May has risen to unelected power, fueled by right-wing rhetoric and striving to push the UK to even new lows. Anonymous UK has never shied from directly standing in opposition to Mrs May; in 2012 we launched a devastating cyber attack that crippled the Home Office’s website in response to her inaction about the threatened extradition of Gary McKinnon, a threat faced today by Lauri Love.

In 2016 we’re going to come knocking on Mrs May’s door.

Austerity measures, once seen as a horrendous option, have now become the political norm. The media gaze has shifted to making scapegoats out of migrants, but we have not forgotten the real cause of the hardship faced by hundreds of thousands of normal people. Cut the causes of the problems, don’t cause more, its time to take an axe to the Tory tree.

The last few November 5ths have fallen in the week, this year it falls on a Saturday. As we pour through the streets of London we aim to show the tourists and gentrifiers that London is not a city in subdued slumber, but a city full of people angry at their rulers, and passionate about change.

We look beyond the narrow scope of Brexit to the inherent problems of the system, capitalism is not working, capitalism has not worked, capitalism will not work. Its time to stop being complacent cogs, grinding towards the bosses’ next bonus package, and instead start working towards radical new solutions. We welcome all and anyone who agrees, you need not wear a Guy Fawkes mask to take to the streets on November 5th. We respect diversity of tactics and welcome anyone who takes the path of direct action.

Last year the biggest gang in London, the Met Police, attended our demonstration in force. Despite reinforcements from across the country they put on a pitiful display of aggression and violence. We call on the Metropolitan Police to restrain from violence and their usual mob mentality. To those attending November 5th with little experience of the Met we have simple advise, the police are not your friends, they do not regard you as such, do not regard them as such either.

In a society that has abolished all adventure, the only adventure left is to abolish that society.

Police have identified the gunman in the mass shooting at a gay club in Florida as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, an American citizen whose parents are from Afghanistan.

Authorities in Orlando said they were investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism, as the death toll rose to 50 with a further 53 wounded.

At face value – it appears to be another senseless tragedy perpetrated by a “terrorist” inspired by militant groups the US claims to have been fighting for now nearly two decades. However, the Independent reports another fact further down in the body of its article, claiming that:

ABC News reported he had been on police’s “radar”, though not subject to an investigation.

Two officials tell CNN that the FBI had investigated Mateen at some point for possibly having ties to or sympathizing with Islamic extremism. A law enforcement official said there were two cases opened involving Mateen but the probes didn’t result in enough evidence to charge him with anything.

In the past two weeks Mateen legally purchased a Glock pistol, found at the shooting scene, from a St. Lucie County area gun store, a law enforcement official said.

What CNN fails to mention is the long history the FBI has of taking “sympathizers” through a series of steps to acquire “enough evidence,” including posing as terrorists and providing suspects with weapons and plans for attacks precisely like the one that just unfolded in Florida.

To understand the implications of yet another high-profile terror attack involving a suspect already known to law enforcement agencies, one must examine previous examples of admittedly set-up attacks “foiled” at the last moment by the FBI, as well as attacks that have been carried out by individuals tracked for years and even arrested multiple times by Western police and intelligence agencies only to be let go time and time again until finally carrying out “the big one.”

ISIS Inspired? Or FBI Inspired? FBI Set Up Multiple Attacks in 2015 Almost Exactly Like the Florida Shooting

A terror suspect armed to the teeth storming a public place and killing scores is actually a very familiar script. The FBI wrote several such scripts in 2015 alone, including entrapping and arresting a mentally-ill suspect after providing him with an arsenal of deadly weapons almost identical to the arsenal recently employed in Florida.

U.S. law enforcement officials announced another terror arrest on Monday, after arming a mentally ill man and then charging him with having guns.

ABC News quoted a “senior federal official briefed on the arrest” as saying: “This is a very bad person arrested before he could do very bad things.”

But in a sting reminiscent of so many others conducted by the FBI since 9/11, Alexander Ciccolo, 23, “aka Ali Al Amriki,” was apparently a mentally ill man who was doing nothing more than ranting about violent jihad and talking (admittedly in frightening ways) about launching attacks—until he met an FBI informant. At that point, he started making shopping lists for weapons.

According to the affidavit, Ciccolo first talked to the FBI informant about attacking two bars and a police station. Later, he spoke of attacking a college campus with a homemade pressure-cooker bomb like the one used in the Boston Marathon terror attack; he also talked about using guns and a lot of ammo. Ciccolo, according to the affidavit, then “ordered the firearms from a confidential human source (“CHS”) working with the FBI.”

The list of weapons provided to the mentally-ill suspect by the FBI informant is shocking. Revealed in the official FBI affidavit (.pdf), the weapons included a 9mm Glock 17, a 10mm Glock 20, a .223 Colt AR-15 rifle, (referred to by the media as an “assault rifle”), and a 556 Sig Arms SG550 rifle (also often referred to as an assault rifle). Also included in the affidavit is the same hysterical rhetoric encouraged by FBI informants now evident in the recent actions of terror suspect Omar Mateen in Florida.

Image: The FBI literally handed these weapons to a mentally ill man who was contemplating attacking bars, police stations, and university campuses. Two of the four weapons were Glocks, a weapon used by Mateen in the recent Florida shooting. Both the 2015 patsy and Mateen also appeared to have been in possession of improvised explosive devices.

The FBI literally provided a mentally ill man they helped plan a terrorist attack together with, an arsenal of deadly weapons – arresting him just before he committed his crime. The only factor that prevented the 2015 entrapment of Ciccolo from becoming a live Florida shooting-style attack was the fact that the FBI arrested Ciccolo before he carried out his planned attack – while those following Mateen did not arrest him.

The role of the FBI in Mateen obtaining his weapons will never be known since Mateen is now – conveniently – dead. Even if he purchased them “legally” at a gun store, it should be noted that in other FBI entrapment cases, suspects were encouraged to purchase weapons themselves, with the FBI arresting them only after they left gun stores with their newly acquired arsenal.

Image: Another patsy set up by the FBI in 2015 was allowed to purchase two semi-automatic rifles at a gun store before being arrested upon leaving with the weapons.

Agents said that on Tuesday and Wednesday Cornell met with the informant the final time to plan their trip to D.C. to execute their plan. He purchased two Armalite M-15 5.56 mm semi-automatic rifles Wednesday morning, along with 600 rounds of ammunition, and was arrested.

Cornell bought the rifles at the Point Blank gun store on Harrison Avenue in Colerain Township. He passed a background check and paid $1,900 in cash, $700 for each rifle and about $400 for the ammunition.

The gun store owner, John Dean, said FBI agents notified him that Cornell was going to come in to buy the guns about 10 minutes before he entered the store.

Dean said the agents told him to allow the purchase and agents would stop Cornell after he left the store.

What if agents didn’t stop him after he left the store? He had two semi-automatic rifles and 800 rounds of ammunition – more than enough to carry out a Florida shooting-style attack. Some may be immediately tempted to conclude that the FBI would never allow an attack they played a role in planning to go “live.” However, they would be wrong.

A Notorious FBI-Staged Attack that Went Live

The FBI in fact was presiding over the terrorists who carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The role of the FBI leading up to the deadly attack would most likely have gone unreported had an FBI informant not taped his conversations with FBI agents after growing suspicious during the uncover operation. The New York Times in their article, “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast,” reported:

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer said.

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City’s tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars.

The FBI and other US, Canadian, and European law enforcement and intelligence agencies “accidentally” failing to stop terror suspects they have long known about and have even arrested multiple times has since become endemic. In recent years, virtually every suspect has either been known by such agencies beforehand, or has been involved in a history of crime and terrorism before carrying out their final acts of grand terrorism.

In reality, what is playing out is an engineered strategy of tension using both the threat of terrorism and actual terrorism to create hysteria, fear, division, and ultimately obedience and capitulation across Western populations.

It should be remembered that Al Qaeda itself began as a US-Saudi joint venture to fight proxy warfare against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan where conventional Western forces could not go. It should also be pointed out that since then, Al Qaeda and its more recent affiliate, the self-proclaimed “Islamic State,” have enjoyed logistical support from the US and NATO for years in proxy wars ranging from Libya to Syria to Iraq and the frontiers of Iran, southern Russia, and western China.

…Syrian opposition forces have completely surrounded the Islamic State-held stronghold of Manbij and cut off the group’s main route to the outside world…..

The loss of Manbij will be a huge loss to the group. It had been a waypoint on an Isil supply line between the Turkish border and the extremist group’s de facto capital, Raqqa.

Again, we see that while the US claims to fight the “Islamic State,” its NATO partner Turkey is quite literally the source of the terrorist organization’s fighting capacity, with US forces permanently stationed in Turkey for decades and Turkey having been a NATO member since the 1950s. Despite open acknowledgments that the “Islamic State” is operating out of Turkey, the US has used the presence of the terrorist organization inside Syria as a pretext for intervening in the war directly.

Were the US truly interested in stopping the “Islamic State,” it and its allies in Ankara would be easily able to wield maximum force within Turkey’s territory to cut the group off before it even reached Syrian territory. That both Washington and Ankara are feigning an inexplicable inability to do this, and insist instead that the war must be fought inside Syria exposes the cynical nature with which the West uses – not fights – terrorism to further its geopolitical and domestic political agendas.

As special interests attempt to leverage this latest terrorist attack – all of these actual facts must be kept in mind to ground us to a reality Western politicians and media outlets will attempt to detach us from in the coming days and weeks.

But as information continues to pour in it’s up to all of us to help collect the data. If you have any relevant news or information about the shooting and the way the investigation is proceeding, please share them in the comments below.

Update at 9:15 p.m.: Statement from Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward: “After the peaceful rally was completed today, a group of outside militants drove to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, where they seized and occupied the refuge headquarters. A collective effort from multiple agencies is currently working on a solution. For the time being please stay away from that area. More information will be provided as it becomes available. Please maintain a peaceful and united front and allow us to work through this situation.”

The Bundy family of Nevada joined with hard-core militiamen Saturday to take over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 50 miles southeast of Burns for years.

The occupation came shortly after an estimated 300 marchers — militia and local citizens both — paraded through Burns to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who are to report to prison on Monday.

Among the occupiers is Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and two of his brothers. Militia members at the refuge claimed they had as many as 100 supporters with them. The refuge, federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was closed and unoccupied for the holiday weekend.

In phone interviews from inside the occupied building Saturday night, Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan Bundy, said they are not looking to hurt anyone. But they would not rule out violence if police tried to remove them, they said.

“The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds,” Ammon Bundy said.

“We’re planning on staying here for years, absolutely,” he added. “This is not a decision we’ve made at the last minute.”

Neither man would say how many people are in the building or whether they are armed. Ryan Bundy said there were no hostages, but the group is demanding that the Hammonds be released and the federal government relinquish control of the Malheur National Forest.

He said many would be willing to fight — and die, if necessary — to defend what they see as constitutionally protected rights for states, counties and individuals to manage local lands.

“The best possible outcome is that the ranchers that have been kicked out of the area, then they will come back and reclaim their land, and the wildlife refuge will be shut down forever and the federal government will relinquish such control,” he said. “What we’re doing is not rebellious. What we’re doing is in accordance with the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land.”

Government sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the militia also was planning to occupy a closed wildland fire station near the town of Frenchglen. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management posts crews there during the fire season.

Law enforcement officials so far have not commented on the situation. Oregon State Police, the Harney County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI were involved.

Ammon Bundy posted a video on his Facebook page calling on patriots from across the country to report to the refuge – with their weapons.

Pennies In ProtestMarchers pause outside the entrance to the Harney County Sheriff’s Office to toss pennies. The coins were meant to symbolize citizens buying back their government

The dramatic turn came after other militia groups had tried to dampen community concerns they meant trouble.

Brandon Curtiss, a militia leader from Idaho, told The Oregonian/OregonLive he knew nothing about the occupation. He helped organize Saturday’s protest and was at the Harney County Fairgrounds with dozens of other militia for a post-parade function. Another militia leader, BJ Soper, took to Facebook to denounce the occupation.

The occupation is being led by hard-core militia who adopted the Hammond cause as their own.

Ammon Bundy met with Dwight Hammond and his wife in November, seeking a way to keep the elderly rancher from having to surrender for prison. The Hammonds professed through their attorneys that they had no interest in ignoring the order to report for prison.

Ammon Bundy said the goal is to turn over federal land to local ranchers, loggers and miners. He said he met with 10 or so residents in Burns on Friday to try to recruit them, but they declined.

Burns Protest Marchers including militia and local residents Saturday head for the Harney County Courthouse as part of a protest against government.

“We went to the local communities and presented it many times and to many different people,” he said. “They were not strong enough to make the stand. So many individuals across the United States and in Oregon are making this stand. We hope they will grab onto this and realize that it’s been happening.”

Among those joining Bundy in the occupation are Ryan Payne, U.S. Army veteran, and Blaine Cooper. Payne has claimed to have helped organize militia snipers to target federal agents in a standoff last year in Nevada. He told one news organization the federal agents would have been killed had they made the wrong move.

He has been a steady presence in Burns in recent weeks, questioning people who were critical of the militia’s presence. He typically had a holstered sidearm as he moved around the community.

At a community meeting in Burns Friday, Payne disavowed any ill intent.

“The agenda is to uphold the Constitution. That’s all,” he said.

Cooper, another militia leader, said at that meeting he participated in the Bundy standoff in Nevada.

“I went there to defend Cliven with my life,” Cooper said.

Ian K. Kullgren of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.

Back in 2014, civil liberties and privacy advocates were up in arms when the government tried to quietly push through the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, a law which would allow federal agencies – including the NSA – to share cybersecurity, and really any information with private corporations “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” The most vocal complaint involved CISA’s information-sharing channel, which was ostensibly created for responding quickly to hacks and breaches, and which provided a loophole in privacy laws that enabled intelligence and law enforcement surveillance without a warrant.

Ironically, in its earlier version, CISA had drawn the opposition of tech firms including Apple, Twitter, Reddit, as well as the Business Software Alliance, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and many others including countless politicians and, most amusingly, the White House itself.

In April, a coalition of 55 civil liberties groups and security experts signed onto an open letter opposing it. In July, the Department of Homeland Security itself warned that the bill could overwhelm the agency with data of “dubious value” at the same time as it “sweep[s] away privacy protections.” Most notably, the biggest aggregator of online private content, Facebook, vehemently opposed the legislation however a month ago it was “surprisingly” revealed that Zuckerberg had been quietly on the side of the NSA all along as we reported in “Facebook Caught Secretly Lobbying For Privacy-Destroying “Cyber-Security” Bill.”

Following the blitz response, the push to pass CISA was tabled following a White House threat to veto similar legislation. Then, quietly, CISA reemerged after the same White House mysteriously flip-flopped, expressed its support for precisely the same bill in August.

And then the masks fell off, when it became obvious that not only are corporations eager to pass CISA despite their previous outcry, but that they have both the White House and Congress in their pocket.

As Wired reminds us, when the Senate passed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act by a vote of 74 to 21 in October, privacy advocates were again “aghast” that the key portions of the law were left intact which they said make it more amenable to surveillance than actual security, claiming that Congress has quietly stripped out “even more of its remaining privacy protections.”

“They took a bad bill, and they made it worse,” says Robyn Greene, policy counsel for the Open Technology Institute.

But while Congress was preparing a second assault on privacy, it needed a Trojan Horse with which to enact the proposed legislation into law without the public having the ability to reject it.

It found just that by attaching it to the Omnibus $1.1 trillion Spending Bill, which passed the House early this morning, passed the Senate moments ago and will be signed into law by the president in the coming hours.

In a late-night session of Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a new version of the “omnibus” bill, a massive piece of legislation that deals with much of the federal government’s funding. It now includes a version of CISA as well. Lumping CISA in with the omnibus bill further reduces any chance for debate over its surveillance-friendly provisions, or a White House veto. And the latest version actually chips away even further at the remaining personal information protections that privacy advocates had fought for in the version of the bill that passed the Senate.

It gets: it appears that while CISA was on hiatus, US lawmakers – working under the direction of corporations adnt the NSA – were seeking to weaponize the revised legislation, and as Wired says, the latest version of the bill appended to the omnibus legislation seems to exacerbate the problem of personal information protections.

It creates the ability for the president to set up “portals” for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security. And it also changes when information shared for cybersecurity reasons can be used for law enforcement investigations. The earlier bill had only allowed that backchannel use of the data for law enforcement in cases of “imminent threats,” while the new bill requires just a “specific threat,” potentially allowing the search of the data for any specific terms regardless of timeliness.

Some, like Senator Ron Wyden, spoke out out against the changes to the bill in a press statement, writing they’d worsened a bill he already opposed as a surveillance bill in the guise of cybersecurity protections.

Senator Richard Burr, who had introduced the earlier version of bill, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Americans deserve policies that protect both their security and their liberty,” he wrote. “This bill fails on both counts.”

Why was the CISA included in the omnibus package, which just passed both the House and the Senate? Because any “nay” votes – or an Obama – would also threaten the entire budget of the federal government. In other words, it was a question of either Americans keeping their privacy or halting the funding of the US government, in effect bankrupting the nation.

And best of all, the rushed bill means there will be no debate.

The bottom line as OTI’s Robyn Green said, “They’ve got this bill that’s kicked around for years and had been too controversial to pass, so they’ve seen an opportunity to push it through without debate. And they’re taking that opportunity.”

The punchline: “They’re kind of pulling a Patriot Act.”

And when Obama signs the $1.1 trillion Spending Bill in a few hours, as he will, it will be official: the second Patriot Act will be the law, and with it what little online privacy US citizens may enjoy, will be gone.

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